I’ve talked often in this blog about the power of chains as a way to track habits, simply because It works. Crossing off any habit as “done” is the exact kind of short term reward that enforces commitment to an action until it becomes a habit. Seeing the chain of daily wins growing is powerful to keep at it.
James Clear mentioned the example of his father who swims daily, and to keep himself motivated , crosses off the day on his calendar after. Why? because on a day-to-day basis he can’t see the impact of committing to his habit, however, every time he crosses off that calendar he feels progress towards becoming healthier.
This is a key idea in James’s book Atomic Habits; every time we commit to a habit we cast a vote to the identity of the type of person we want to become. We need to ask ourselves 2 questions to form the right habits for us:
- Who is the type of person we want to be?
- What choices does this type of person make?
For example, if healthy is our new chosen identity, we need to ask ourselves what would a healthy person do? What meal would he/she pick? What would they say when offered dessert? Every time we work out we also strengthen our new identity as healthy people, our chain would prove it even if we still can’t or feel the results yet. Seeing visual progress helps us keep going instead of quitting.
I enjoy how some applications and platforms also use the concept of chains, Readwise keeps a streak of how many days users read their selection of book highlights. Akmibo workshops keep streaks of how many days students show up in the workshop in a row and notify them every now and then and also post their names on a board for all streak keepers. As their student, this makes me want to show up even more to keep and grow my streak, this is the funny and lovely thing about our beautiful human brain, it gets so motivated by all this tracking and rewarding.
Make the magic of streaks work for you too. Start a chain of a new daily habit and keep showing up every single day. Remember to ask what kind of person you want to be, then do what that person does and track it everyday.